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Warming to the Occasion

The Source

It could have been worse. I used to live in the rural wilds of Arenzville where I’d still be without power today. But when the power went off with 50 mph winds driving the wind chill down into the Arctic Circle numbers, I was totally unprepared. I’ll admit that I’m spoiled. Used to be the slightest breeze would knock Ameren’s lines against each other and our little village would be stuck in the cold darkness for days. Since the power company has begun burying more electric lines and denuding our villages of overhanging limbs, turning the trees in Arenzville and other towns into what looks like the work of a topiary hacker on LSD, we seldom lose power. But you all remember the day on the week prior to Christmas when the ugly storm front gob-smacked the Jacksonville area with the snowstorm that seemed to come parallel to the ground like an angry polar bear. I was home alone. Single people do that. The lights flickered on and off for an hour and I could guess what was coming, so I hurried around the house gathering emergency supplies. This would have been much easier if I’d actually had any emergency supplies. It would have been somewhat easy if the town of Arenzville had any emergency supplies. We have a wonderful little convenience store that’s not called an emergency store for obvious reasons. Then….bam. The power was off…for good. …and that was bad. Very bad. The wind was predicted to maintain its howling for the rest of the night. Things weren’t looking good on the Ponderosa, Pa. Most people have flashlights. They’re good for signaling planes, looking for lost puppies at two in the morning, and checking down your son’s throat to see what he’s swallowed. I don’t do any of those things. If I want to get up in the middle of the night I turn on a light. DISCOVERY #1: a Kindle Fire will not only put out enough light to see your way to the bathroom but it’ll give you something to do once you get there. DISCOVERY #2: Kindle Fires run on batteries and batteries eventually run down. It was to be a mad race between the linemen of Ameren and Amazon.com. I looked for candles. Being neither a follower of Far Eastern religions nor an aging hippy, I had no large candles in the house. The light of my Kindle allowed me to rummage around in a cabinet and find four small, blue birthday candles. I’m talking about the itsy-bitsy matchstick-sized globs of wax and wick. DISCOVERY # 3: Birthday candles burn very quickly. As the disappointing little flames dissolved in less than ten minutes I pondered buying a set for my church’s Advent season in order to hurry along the length of our Christmas sermons. DISCOVERY #4: You have to get your hands very, very close to a birthday candle to get any warmth. I should have lit them one at a frigid time. DISCOVERY #5: You can make a tolerable cup of coffee with a jar of Instant Folgers and the remnants of your house’s hot water heater. It’s lukewarm, but my mood heated it up enough to drink. DISCOVERY #6: Canned tuna is pretty bland when the lights are on, but when it’s dark and cold and there’s nothing else to do, the little fishies can become a feast. Had I been prepared for emergencies like this I’d have had other things in my house, but I’m single and instead of a wife I have a microwave. If it won’t nuke it will be in no danger of being eaten. The strange thing is that that I never buy canned tuna. I felt my way around the back of the cabinet and found it. It was too dark to read the expiration date, but I bought the house in 1986 and I assume it came with the building. It seemed almost sacrilegious to scarf down the one remaining artifact from the previous owners, but perhaps the tuna dated to the owner before them. DISCOVERY #7: Time moves by very, very slowly when the power’s out and you’re freezing. A car coming down the street becomes a cause of celebration. The ticking of your clock gets very loud. DISCOVERY #8: In times of stress your memory gets a real stretching. Did Mom once tell me that if dared open the fridge when the power was out, then all the cold would immediately rush out into the room? Are you supposed to crack a window slightly if you want to sleep in a running car? Can anything that tastes as bad as canned tuna truly go bad? The final discovery of that ugly evening was that on Thursday afternoon of Creation, God made power company linemen, and at that moment that was the only revelation I truly cared about.